Bikies, Nazis, and the Future of the Church

Today I read in the Telegraph about a mother who has been restricted by the courts from taking her child to pro-Nazi rallies, and from encouraging her child to follow her in her “ultra right-wing views.” In the paper, John Faulks said that “freedom of speech is only allowed when it does not impinge upon the rights of an individual” (paraphrase from memory).

Similarly, the government has recently been cracking down on bikie gangs. It is now illegal for the outlawed gangs in question to congregate as a group.

Although I think that these are good outcomes, I am disturbed by the trend. How long is it until it is wrong for a mother to share her “ultra right-wing” Christian beliefs with her child? In most of modern thought, for instance, to say that homosexual behaviour is an abomination to God is considered right-wing and hateful. Even the commentators on the Telegraph article I linked have associated the mother with religion:

I suppose she is as loopy as religious nuts who preach domination and draconian law every friday to their whole community
Posted by: Real Life of Sydney 7:16am today

She can just take them to the Catholic Church instead.
Posted by: Tierp 6:32am today

I believe we are coming to a time of increased intolerance toward religious belief in our society, with a particular persecution of Christianity. May the Lord God bless His church as we continue to proclaim His Word without fear.

God Justifies the Wicked

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD.
(Proverbs 17:15)

The Bible is clear – the wicked man stands under God’s judgement. We cannot expect God to act in any way apart from his justice – God must punish the wicked.

For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
(Romans 3:22-26)

But, because of His great love for us, God has provided for the world a gift – the man Christ Jesus. God put Him forward as a propitiation – a sacrifice that took His anger and punishment. God showed His justice and righteousness – a man was punished, with the infinite pains of Hell.

God is just, he forgave us through the God-man Jesus Christ, and justifies those who place their faith in Him.

This is the good news: God justifies the wicked.

And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the wicked, his faith is counted as righteousness.
(Romans 4:5)

Rick Warren, Saddleback, and Pentecost

I wonder if the congregation at Saddleback ever get sick of gimmicks? This is doing its rounds in the blog sphere at the moment.

I think the biggest problem with this (and I do believe there are a lot of them!) is that the main attraction of signing up is – you get to meet Rick Warren, the pastor of the church.

I love my church, where I can give my pastor a call and get a cup of coffee with him. I can be accountable to him, and he can ask me about my wife and my study, and encourage me to be reading my Bible and memorise passages with me.

Why do Presbyterians baptise infants?

Given the recent interest in Mark Dever and his statements about infant baptism (paedobaptism), I thought it might be a good opportunity for me to put out there just what I think about the issue. I go to a Presbyterian church, and believe along with the Reformed tradition that not only should new converts be baptised, but also the children of believing parents. In order to examine the issue, I think that it is best to start in Genesis (!).

God calls Abraham to be the father of a great nation, and gives him a covenant – a promise to bind God to Abraham and his descendants -

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
(Gen 12:1-4)

We also learn at this point that God justifies Abraham by faith -

And [Abraham] believed the LORD, and [God] counted it to him as righteousness.
(Gen 15:6)

So, Abraham is given this covenant, and God has justified Abraham by faith, in the same way as we are justified this side of the cross (Rom 4:3). Justification by grace alone through faith alone.

The way that God teaches His people to remember this covenant is to give them a certain sign. God gives signs with all His covenants, as a way of looking back to see that God is the one who keeps His promises. In this covenant with Abraham, God gives the sign of circumcision -

And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
(Gen 17:9-14)

God called for Abraham and his descendants to remember God’s promise by circumcising all the males in their households. The head of the household, as a member of the covenant, represented the whole family before God. The father’s faith meant that the family was circumcised. This is sometimes referred to as federalism – the head of the family was the Federal Head, representing the family before God. Covenants are always federal in nature – we can see an example of this especially in Romans 5.

As the Bible progresses, we see that the promises to Abraham are not fulfilled in the Old Testament. The descendants of Abraham, the Israelites, enter the promised land, but by the end of the OT they have been exiled several times, and were by no means a great nation, with a great name, who blessed all the peoples of the earth. To fulfil this covenant, God’s people had to look outside of themselves.

Now, we come to the New Testament.

As an interesting side note, how inspired is that page that sits between the Old and New Testaments? I believe that it really makes a difference in how you view the Bible if you just forget about it. In fact, in my old Bible, I took it out (carefully!).

In the New Covenant, we come across many passages which tie the salvation of Gentiles in to the covenant made with Abraham -

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
(Gal 3:7-9)

The New Testament makes it clear that the promise made to Abraham was what we would now call “the gospel” – that the Lord Jesus, as head of His people, would ransom them, and make a nation of them, and bless all the nations through them. The covenant with Abraham was about Christ, and the body of Christ – the church.

We don’t find anything in the New Testament which removes the idea of federalism – no Jews complaining that their children are no longer blessed through their parents’ faith. In fact, we have a very interesting example of Paul dealing with this idea.

Imagine – you are a Jewish woman, and your children have always been a member of the covenant due to the fact that your husband is a Jew. All of a sudden, Paul comes along preaching justification by grace alone through faith alone, and you are converted. But, sadly, the federal head of the family isn’t – your husband remains an unbeliever. Of course, you would worry that this might change things. Paul writes to you in 1 Corinthians 7 -

If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
(1Co 7:13-14)

Then, later in the epistles, Paul writes this to the Colossians -

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.
(Col 2:11-12)

Clearly, what Paul is saying is this: the circumcision that Christ experienced was bestowed on believers when they were united with Him. Now, the act of baptism signifies that – being buried with Christ and being raised with Him. The sign of the covenant with Abraham – circumcision – has been replaced with the sign of baptism.

So, what we have is this:

• The same gospel has been preached to us as to Abraham – justification by grace alone through faith alone.
• The same covenant has been entered into by both Abraham and Christians – what Reformed theologians have called “The Covenant of Grace”.
• No retraction anywhere in the New Testament of the idea of a federal household principle.
• The replacement of the sign of circumcision with the sign of baptism.

I believe that these truths point us necessarily to the principle of infant baptism – if the household of one believer is made holy, and the pattern we receive from God is based upon households, then we should not refrain from baptising our infants.

This is what Allie and I will do, God willing, if He decides to grant us children. Let the interaction continue!

2009 Ligonier Conference Video – Free For A Limited Time

I will be watching this, when I get some time!

Mark Dever, infant baptism, and sin

Mark Dever cannot tolerate: Universalism, Racism, and Paedobaptism.

Carl Trueman and Rick Phillips reply on Reformation21.

R. Scott Clark has replied on the 9Marks blog.

Preparing to preach

Today is my day off college. Every week we get Monday off, which is a great blessing. I start the day by meeting with a friend from Moore College, for breakfast and prayer. Then I head off home, waste some time, then get to work.

Today I’m preparing for a sermon I’m preaching in April. It is on the very same passage that I will be writing a NT Greek Exegesis paper on later this year: Luke 19:1-10.

Fact: My New Testament Greek lecturer attends my church.

Fact: My New Testament Greek lecturer will be away the week I am preaching.

Dodged a bullet there!

SDG

Learning Languages

As a second year student at the PTC, I’ve taken up learning Biblical Hebrew. I learnt Greek last year, and really let it get on top of me. I’ll make a few comments on what I’ve found helpful in language learning, and some of the things that I haven’t.

Things I’ve found helpful

• Look for a good lecturer. A good lecturer will always aim to make things as clear as possible, and make his/her line of thought clear for the whole class. It is easy for some lecturers to rush over thoughts or reasons for doing things the way that they do. While it is not always your choice who lectures you in languages, this should be very high on your list of priorities when you are choosing your class. If you are weighing up whether or not to take a language subject, check who is teaching it. It could make a big difference!
• Always read the relevant chapters through in your textbook before and after the class. The book will almost always put things straight in your head if you aren’t understanding something. Remember: the writer of the book is published. Your lecturer may not be! Even if your lecturer is the one who wrote the textbook, read it though anyway, and maybe check another textbook for reference.
• Flash cards for vocabulary and paradigms. And I’m talking physical flash cards here, not ones on your computer. Physical cards can be whipped out anytime; in front of the TV, on the train, at your desk. Lugging a laptop round and booting it up every time you want to revise your vocab is not advisable. I’ve spent some of my book bursary on these Greek cards, and on this Hebrew big boy. Although they don’t have the paradigms on the cards, they get you most of the way, even if you are lazy like me!
• Knuckle down, and don’t expect it to be easy. Greek is easy to begin, and gets much harder. Hebrew is the opposite. You have hard work ahead of you. Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established. (Pro 16:3)

Things I haven’t found helpful

• Expecting to learn by osmisis. You won’t learn enough if you just turn up to class. Trust me. Pretty soon, you’ll be sitting there, stressed out of your brain, because they will be talking about perfective aspectual morpheme declensions, or something like that. It Won’t Work.
• Expecting to learn by translation. At the end of first year, I thought I had done quite well because I could translate Mark 1-5 quite well. I had no idea about grammar, I could just look at the passage and make an educated guess as to how the words interacted. I no longer think this. I am now in a Greek class with third year students who almost make me cry with terror every week. Learn your grammar, learn your paradigms. No matter how smart you are, you will fail somewhere down the line if you don’t.
• Getting frustrated when things don’t sink in. Go and get some tea. Have a relax. Read the Bible, in English for a while. Don’t expect more of yourself than you can do. Remember, you spent years learning English, and that was when you were saturated in it every day of the week. Calm down, and divide up your work into managable sections. It is very easy to be overwhelmed, I know. Work hard, but not too hard. The crazy smart guy in your class who knows everything still has to work hard too!

These are some of the things I’ve learnt over the last year and a bit. I hope they will bless some up and coming languages star. If I had this advice this time last year, things might have been very different!

How about you guys? Any thoughts on what helps you?

The Sola Panel weighs in on the Driscoll/”New Calvinism” issue

Check it out here.

Avoision?

This morning in my Bible reading I was struck by these verses:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
(2Ti 3:1-5)

Paul was preparing Timothy for the onset of the final days, which began when Jesus ascended into heaven. He seems to imply that there will be an intensifying of evil as we approach the return of Christ, and it will be marked by a ‘turning inward’ of those inside the church who do not know the Lord – “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”

The sins Paul lists are extensive. So extensive that, like the law, this list should bring us to our knees in recognition of our sin. These sins, Paul says, deny the power of godliness. They are a fake. They are cheap knock-offs, like those mobile phones you buy for little kids. The love of money, the love of ourselves, a lack of self-control, loving anything but good and God deny His power, and deny the righteousness of Christ.

The question I ask is this: are we really setting our minds to call other members of our congregations to holy lives? It is really easy to think that that is the pastor’s job; he is the one who should be encouraging us and conforming us to Scripture. How easily we fall into laziness!

The second application for the passage is very clear: those who have the appearance of godliness, but deny its power, should be avoided. Do we have a culture of holy “avoision” in our churches?

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
(1Pe 1:13-16)